Former Marion resident designs center for New Bohemia district

Dream big. That's what architectural students like Malorie Hepner are encouraged to do when they earn their master's degrees.

That's what officials in Cedar Rapids are doing as they plan for the city's future two years after the Flood of 2008.

Combine the two and it just might be appropriate to take a closer look at Malorie's really cool Permaculture Education Center.

Designed to earn her master's degree - that long, stressful process that requires months of planning, preparation of drawings, writing a 150-page thesis and presenting it to a review board - the Permaculture Education Center is a study of yesterday and today. (Check out her website at www.maloriehepner.

com and click on her 'Youth Education Center' project.) This education center features everything from a look at organic agriculture to plenty of display space and a restaurant. Its variety of buildings, from soaring greenhouse to barnlike visitor's center, would en­compass 45,000 square feet between Second and Third streets from 12th Avenue to 14th Avenue SE in the New Bohemia District.

'It's got to look cool, have higher aspirations and be buildable,' Malorie says by phone from her home in Savannah, Ga. That's where this 2003 Cedar Rapids Xavier graduate took her talents to earn degrees at Savannah College of Art and Design.

She hopes to return to the Midwest for work.

Last summer Malorie, 23, who grew up in Marion, visited the once flooded New Bohemia District, the area east of the Cedar River across from Czech Village that also was established by Czech immigrants.

'The whole place was empty,' she says. 'Nobody was in the street.' The Permaculture Education Center would help rectify that.

'The biggest needs present were for sustainable education and activities for children in the downtown area,' Malorie wrote in her thesis' conclusion. 'The best way that most people in the area will be able to accept and understand sustainable principles is with permaculture principles, which embrace common-sense sustainability and community interaction.' In other words, by using locally harvested and manufactured building materials left exposed and a design that incorporates the Czech heritage, the center would become a family-friendly destination. It would include hands-on educational opportunities, a farmers market, even a restaurant in the present 'Little Bo' building that would remain.

'This thesis project is really about looking at a specific place and reminding the residents of that location what made them special,' Malorie says.

'I wanted to pay reverence to the structures that are there. It's broken up into a city context. Small, individual spaces.' So how many millions of dollars would it take?

'I have no cost estimate,' Malorie chuckles. 'The thesis is to look at possibilities. The ideal world. The majority of the projects don't get built.' But, as long as we're dreaming big, let's think what if?

'I know it's not something that could happen in 10 years,' says a realistic Malorie. 'Maybe not even in 20 years.' Then again, look around.

The National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library building will be moved and rebuilt.

The city's planning a farmers market in the old Quality Chef building. Other businesses are opening in the New Bohemia District.

Maybe Malorie's idea, or at least part of it, is ripe for picking now.